Automobile dealers often arrange for financing of vehicles for their customers as an additional service to selling automobiles. However, the automobile dealers do not have the resources to collect, manage, and enforce these finance contracts. Therefore, after entering into a finance contract with a customer, the automobile dealers look to resell the finance contract to a company in the business of financing, referred to herein as a “finance source,” which may be a credit union, a bank, a captive finance company, etc. The rate at which a finance source purchases a finance contract from an automobile dealer affects the rate that the dealer charges the customer. The ability to offer competitive finance rates often impacts the volume of automobiles that a dealer is able to sell. Dealers often leverage attractive financing options to assist them in reducing inventory, when necessary, through the use of advertised financing programs. Such financing programs are offered through finance sources that are willing to guarantee particular rates of purchase from the dealer for the duration of the program. These guaranteed rates for a duration of time are referred to in the automobile finance industry as “rate programs.”
Conventionally, rate programs are provided to dealers in a haphazard manner. Typically, requests for rate programs are initiated via email, telephone, or fax machine and have no standard format. For example, an employee of a finance source may generate and submit a request for a rate program via email to a colleague within the finance source that states, “Please provide me with a rate program from July 6 to July 14 for Ford Explorer® and Ford Taurus® automobiles.” (Ford Explorer and Ford Taurus are registered trademarks of the Ford Motor Company). However, the employee may fail to mention particular automobile model numbers involved in the program or whether cash is available from the manufacturer that may be used to reduce rates. Consequently, the conventional process often results in many communications to identify all of the information needed to produce the requested rate program. This process results in time wasted by finance source employees, thereby reducing productivity and increasing costs.
In this conventional process, once a rate program request is received and all relevant information is identified, a rate program is developed. Finance source personnel then manually prepare spreadsheets with finance rates, referred to as “rate sheets,” which indicate the rates that the financing source is willing to offer for the rate program. The rate sheet is then manually sent to one or more targeted automobile dealers, typically via facsimile. This cumbersome process wastes valuable time of finance source employees, reduces productivity, and increases costs. Accordingly, an improved rate program development system is needed in the art.